After Cigarettes and Iron Ore Disappeared, Here’s What Japan Now Buys From Ukraine
Looking at product categories in the Ministry of Finance's trade statistics, cigarettes, which made up half of Japan's imports from Ukraine in 2021, stopped appearing in the statistics from 2023, and iron ore likewise disappeared by 2024. The largest import category now is aluminum. Japan's exports remain centered on passenger cars, with railway rails standing out in 2024 and transformers in 2025.
In 2021, half of what Japan imported from Ukraine was cigarettes. The next largest item was iron ore. Looking at the Ministry of Finance’s trade statistics by product category, these two had nearly vanished from the statistics by 2024, and aluminum is now the largest category. Japan’s exports to Ukraine have been centered on passenger cars both before and after the invasion. This article lines up five years of data, from 2021 through 2025, by product category.
Where the Numbers Come From, and How to Read Them
This article uses the “Trade Statistics by Country and by Major Commodity” table on the Ministry of Finance’s trade statistics search page. The country was set to “Ukraine” (country code 238), and the calendar-year values were taken from the “cumulative” column for December of each year. Both “exports” and “imports” are given from Japan’s point of view: “exports” go from Japan to Ukraine, and “imports” come from Ukraine to Japan. “Major commodities” (概況品) is a classification that groups detailed statistical items together under a general name, in units such as “passenger cars,” “iron ore,” and “aluminum and aluminum alloys.”
Amounts have been converted from the search page’s unit (thousand yen) into ¥100 millions (oku-en), rounded to one decimal place. Figures through 2024 are “final” (確定). The 2025 figures are the “final-provisional” (確々報) figures published on March 12, 2026. The final figures for 2024 were published on November 13, 2025, and the 2025 figures may also be revised once they reach the final stage.
The Ministry of Finance’s usage notes also state the following. Low-value shipments of ¥200,000 or less are not recorded. In addition, where disclosing quantity and value would reveal a trade secret of the exporter or importer, “non-disclosure processing” is applied upon request, and as a result the quantity or value shown for some product categories may differ from the actual transaction; however, the Ministry states that the total trade value by country is unaffected. Figures by product category need to be read with this in mind.
Imports: A Lineup That Changed Over Five Years
| Item | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total imports | 79.92 | 47.06 | 12.85 | 11.76 | 11.28 |
| Tobacco | 41.00 | 18.11 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Iron ore | 26.01 | 12.39 | 1.38 | 0 | 0 |
| Aluminum and aluminum alloys | 3.59 | 2.24 | 2.62 | 4.50 | 4.44 |
| Corn | 0.03 | 4.17 | 3.05 | 2.60 | 0 |
Of the ¥7.992 billion in imports in 2021, tobacco accounted for ¥4.100 billion, or 51.3%, and iron ore for ¥2.601 billion, or 32.6%. Combined, the two made up more than 80%. Most of the tobacco was cigarettes.
Once Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, 2022, these two items shrank sharply. Tobacco fell to ¥1.811 billion in 2022 and no longer appears in the statistics from 2023 onward. Iron ore fell to ¥1.239 billion in 2022 and ¥138 million in 2023, with no value recorded for 2024 or 2025. The drop in total imports, from ¥7.992 billion in 2021 to ¥1.176 billion in 2024 — roughly a seventh of the earlier figure — can be attributed almost entirely to these two items.
The statistics do not explain why these flows stopped. Whether production, transport, or a business decision by trading partners was responsible cannot be determined from this table. Nor can a user of the statistics tell whether the non-disclosure processing described above played any role.
What Japan Is Buying Now
In both 2024 and 2025, the largest import category was aluminum and aluminum alloys: ¥4.500 billion (13,523 tonnes) in 2024 and ¥4.440 billion (13,149 tonnes) in 2025, or roughly 40% of total imports. In value terms, this exceeds the 2021 figure of ¥3.590 billion.
The items ranking below aluminum shift considerably from year to year. In 2024, corn came to ¥2.600 billion (66,176 tonnes), most of it for animal feed. In 2025, however, corn shows no value in the statistics, and grain overall fell to just ¥90 million. What grew in 2025 instead was “milk and cream,” centered on powdered milk (¥1.160 billion, of which ¥990 million was powdered milk), and vegetable oils and fats (¥1.080 billion).
| Item | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Aluminum and aluminum alloys | 4.50 | 4.44 |
| Corn | 2.60 | 0 |
| Milk and cream | 0.19 | 1.16 |
| Vegetable oils and fats | 0.14 | 1.08 |
| Household electrical appliances | 0.14 | 0.54 |
| Clothing and accessories | 0.49 | 0.55 |
| Sawn wood | 0.34 | 0.28 |
When the total is only around ¥12 billion, the entry or exit of a single item can shift the ranking and the composition considerably. Summing up 2025 imports as “imports from a country of dairy products and oil” would be premature based on a single year’s figures.
Exports: Passenger Cars Remain Central
In every year, passenger cars have been the largest category among Japan’s exports to Ukraine.
| Year | Total exports | Passenger cars | Passenger cars (units) | Passenger car share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 64.03 | 50.29 | 20,542 | 78.5% |
| 2022 | 35.72 | 29.36 | 8,683 | 82.2% |
| 2023 | 60.13 | 48.39 | 12,449 | 80.5% |
| 2024 | 66.02 | 41.93 | 11,315 | 63.5% |
| 2025 | 86.68 | 67.24 | 16,072 | 77.6% |
Exports fell to just over half the previous year’s level in 2022, recovered in 2023, and reached ¥86.68 billion in the 2025 final-provisional figures, the largest of the five years. In terms of units, the 16,072 cars exported in 2025 still fall short of the 20,542 exported in 2021. That the value exceeds 2021’s despite fewer units reflects a higher price per car: the 2021 average was about ¥2.45 million, versus about ¥4.18 million in 2025 (calculated by dividing value by units).
What Stands Out Besides Passenger Cars
In 2024, the share held by passenger cars fell to 63.5%. What stood out that year was “rails” (軌条), meaning railway rails. ¥5.440 billion (24,915 tonnes) of rails were exported in 2024, the second-largest export item that year after passenger cars. Rail exports do not appear in the statistics for 2021. In 2025, rails came to ¥600 million (2,979 tonnes).
In 2025, 14 transformers (listed in the statistics as “transformers”) were exported, worth ¥3.250 billion. Also notable were construction and mining machinery such as bulldozers and excavators (hydraulic shovels), worth ¥2.000 billion in 2024, and tractors: 1,653 units (¥720 million) in 2024 and 1,665 units (¥710 million) in 2025.
Rails, transformers, and construction machinery are the kinds of items that could also be used to repair railways and power grids damaged by Russian attacks. However, trade statistics show only the product category, quantity, and value of cargo that cleared customs; they do not show who bought it, what it was used for, or whether it was procured using aid funding. Reading these figures as the outcome of any particular aid program would require other sources.
How This Differs From Other Articles
This site also has an article on Ukraine’s export rankings, which covers Ukraine’s exports and main trading partners worldwide; that article does not cover the bilateral product categories between Japan and Ukraine. The bilateral annual totals also appear in The Japan–Ukraine Timeline and in the article on the Japan–Ukraine relationship, and the totals in this article are based on the same statistics as those. Procedures for importing Ukrainian food into Japan are covered in the article on import procedures and contact points.
Sources and article record
Sources and references
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